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Video Montage of Third Annual Odyssey Awards Gala Featuring Governor Mitch Daniels, Montel Williams, Dr. Paul Offit and CMPI president Peter Pitts

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels

Montel Williams, Emmy Award-Winning Talk Show Host

Paul Offit, M.D., Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for Leadership in Transformational Medicine

CMPI president Peter J. Pitts

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The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected
In its ruling, the 8th Circuit noted that the
That’s unfortunate since it will lead to
"
So there is preemptive authority when it comes to pricing – but their isn’t preemptive authority when it comes to safety? An unfortunate allegory akin to health reform really being abot cost containment rather than patient care.
The complete story can be found here.
Who is one of the major players driving this investigation? None other than Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Read More & Comment...
Read More & Comment...
How? By adhering to free market principles. The success of Part D is due to its uniquely American hybrid nature. The federal government partnered with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to offer senior citizens healthcare choice via free market competition. Rather than a one-size-fits-all government plan, Part D offers dozens of private sector plans offering Medicare-eligible Americans various options that best suit their personal healthcare situations. Uncle Sam doesn't design the programs or process the claims or dictate the formularies. Uncle Sam writes the check and sets the ground rules so that everyone has access to the medicines they need. And the same can happen for access to health insurance - but only when we purge ourselves of the notion of the "essential nature" of a "public" plan. Read More & Comment...
Read More & Comment...
As it is today.
According to a story in today’s Financial Times, Search engines pressed over drug ads policy,
“Pressure is building on the major US search engines to stop showing advertising from overseas drug sellers that deliver potentially counterfeit and dangerous products to consumers in violation of federal laws. The US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration are concerned that the practice is continuing despite the deaths of consumers who ordered drugs without examination by a doctor.”
It was the right thing to do in 2004 and it’s the right thing to do now.
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Read More & Comment...
- The private sector has been slowly funding less and less of the total national health expenditures; as of 2007 less than 54 percent of total national health care expenditures are paid for by the private sector.
- Reciprocally, the public sector has been slowly funding more and more of the total national health expenditures; as of 2007 public expenditures at the federal and state levels now fund nearly one-half of the total health care expenditures in the U.S.
- Total out-of-pocket expenditures have been plummeting as a share of total health expenditures at an even faster rate; today only a bit more than $1 out of every $10 spent on health care is being funded by individuals through out-of-pocket expenditures.
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In keeping with President Obama’s request that patriotic Americans call out those who are spreading misleading information about healthcare reform, I must call out none other than New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert.
In his column today, “This is Reform?”,
A few points of clarification.
First of all, the net annual profit of the top 20 innovator pharmaceutical companies is about $110 billion. Anyone who pays taxes knows the difference between gross and net, so it’s not unfair to ask if Mr. Herbert was trying to be purposefully misleading.
Second, that same industry invests $60 billion a year in research and development. A fact entirely absent from Mr. Herbert’s analysis.
And, finally, Mr. Herbert omits the fact that on-patent pharmaceuticals represent about only 8% of our entire national healthcare spend. 8 cents on the healthcare dollar.
Madame Defarge, take note and keep knitting.
Read More & Comment...That's competition for you.
12,000 people showed up.
They were not angry or unAmerican or part of any lunatic fringe group as Speaker Pelosi would have it. They were not evilmongers as Senator Reid claims they are.
They were friendly, happy and well-informed about the health care bills pending in Congress. They were not bitter or clinging to guns. They had a dry sense of humor as many of the signs suggested. Obamacare Rx.. " Take two Tylenol and call me when you're dead"(When I was on stage and told the assembled I was Yankee fan, they booed me. One of the participants reminded me this was a pro-NRA crowd....)
And they had or have their own ideas about how to fix health care, combination of an insistence that no one be left behind, America's cutting edge science with self-determination:
1. Get rid of the public plan.
2. Eliminate any vestige of government bureaucrats deciding what is valuable or wasteful or cost-effective.
3. Let people create their own health networks and buying groups around what is best for them based on patient-centered needs and outcomes.
It's our money, our lives, our choices. We have given up too much control to government over decisions too important for far too long.
Time to take back control.
The arrogant effort of a liberal elite to centralize control over the practice of medicine and the capitulation of "stakeholders" in that effort have triggered among many an awakening that health care is a decision we have left in the hands of people and organizations that do not have our interests at heart.
Simply modifying the public "option" will not do.
Only self-determination will suffice.
That's what I learned from my fellow Americans in Atlanta.
Read more about the Atlanta Health Care rally here.
Here is a picture of me with extremely poor posture...
Video footage of the rally can be viewed here.
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Interesting op-ed in Daily Mail by British columnist Stephen Glover. The title says it all:
I deeply resent the Americans sneering at our health service - but perhaps that's because the truth hurts
Here’s how it begins:
"President Barack Obama's political enemies are rounding on his controversial proposals to extend government involvement in health care. One way in which they are doing so is to hold up our own cherished NHS for ridicule."
And here’s how it ends:
"The President is discovering that people are apt to want to defend and preserve what they have. The same is true of we British and our lumbering health service. The difference, though, is that what the Americans have is, for the most part, better than the NHS."
And here’s a link to the complete article.
A urine test could help doctors decide which drugs will be most effective for their patients, scientists have shown.In trials the test predicted how well men would respond to paracetamol. The experts from Imperial College London and the drug giant Pfizer report their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers say this kind of "metabolic profiling" could ultimately allow doctors to work out perfect drug matches for individuals, with no risk of side effects. "Pre-clinical studies had suggested it might be possible to predict how individuals would react to drugs by looking at their pre-dose metabolite profiles, but this is the first time that anyone has been able to show convincingly that such a test could work in humans.
"The beauty of the pre-dose metabolite profiling is that it can tap into both genetic and environmental factors influencing drug treatment outcomes."
The full BBC story can be found here.
Read More & Comment...When I was asked to advise President Obama’s FDA transition team, some of the smartest questions came from Alta Charo. Now she can ask even smarter questions from the inside. Starting on August 31st, she’s joining FDA as a senior advisor, reporting to Assistant Commissioner for Policy David Horowitz.
Charo (a professor of law and bioethics at the
Charo told colleagues in
See what Lou Dobbs has to say -- with some help from your's truly.
Click here ... and watch where you sit.
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Here's a link to the short segment.
Not fatigued -- empowered!
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As an antidote to the American media’s near-myopia about health care in considering the UK and Canada the only foreign countries with any relevance (which has abated somewhat but not nearly enough), some health care headlines from elsewhere in the world.
In Germany, in new poll by the Allensbach Institute indicates that the population is concerned about two-class medicine, with 72 percent of participants saying they are concerned that patients with private insurance get better treatment than those in the public system. And 80 percent of doctors say they don’t have enough time with patients to complete everything they need to.
Further, public sickness funds face deficits next year that are estimated at between 7 and 11 billion euros. Special “ancillary premiums” are likely to be charged by the sickness funds at some point this year and the insurers are seeking, unsuccessfully so far, more money from the government.
In France, the coffers of the national health care system are 9.4 billion euros in the red and conservative politicians there have been making ominous pronouncements about the future of the Sécurité Sociale system as a whole.
In Switzerland, health care premiums could rise up to 20 percent next year. A poll found that some 30 percent of people there may switch insurance companies if premiums go up 10 percent, some 43 percent if they increase 15 percent, and a majority will move to a cheaper company if the rise is indeed 20 percent. In addition, 58 percent say they are against the 30 Swiss franc (~$27) co-pay for visits to the doctor.
Deficits, co-pays, and too short consultations with the doctor. If this all sounds familiar, it should. The US isn’t alone in its problems and no system is perfect, all make trade-off with regard to what they cover and what they cost. All three of the above systems are either private or public-private hybrids that bear lots of similarities to the US system –and to American reform proposals, making it clear that no matter what the outcome of the bills now before Congress, the challenges the US faces aren’t going to magically melt away.
There are no panaceas in either policy or medicine and those who believe there are have been duped. The lesson is clear: look before you leap –and look carefully.
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That's a loss.
Dan's smart, feisty, and calls it like he sees it -- a trait that has often put him at odds with lesser mortals.
And he's a nice, decent guy. Two traits often in short supply.
Good luck and God's Speed Dan Schultz.
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It seems now that another company, Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, isn't satisfied with patent litigation as its weapon of choice. Unsatisfied with the way the FDA is dealing with their file for generic Lovenox, they've achieved new lows by attempting personal intimidation tactics. It won't work.
They're slinging mud. It will only come back to splatter on their own reputation.
Amphastar claims that its rival, Momenta, has a "leg up" and is getting "special access." And yet both companies are in the same place in the regulatory process and both companies are being asked for the same data sets. And this is unfair why?
According to Amphastar it's unfair because CDER Director, Dr. Janet Woodcock co-authored a paper with one of Momenta's founders, MIT biological engineering professor Ram Sasisekharan, on how the FDA taskforce (on which they both served) identified and contained the cause of contaminated Chinese heparin imports.
Talk about desperate measures.
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"His approval ratings slipping, President Barack Obama is retooling his message on health care overhaul, aiming to win over Americans who already have insurance."
Wait a minute. I thought the goal of reform was to cover people who did not have insurance and couldn't afford it or were denied coverage. Shouldn't the proposal be retooled as opposed to the message?
"Republicans say the heated debate is a sign of widespread public dissatisfaction with Obama's ideas. But with some of the anxieties spilling into angry disruptions and even threats, Democrats have accused Republicans of orchestrating the events to sabotage legislation. In an article published Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote, "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American."
Obama and his aides stayed away from such provocative language"
Right, they just set up a government website to collect information about political opposition and promising congressional Democrats that they would "punch back twice as hard" against opponents. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25891.html
Do they address the major flaws and impact of every proposal on the table.
No.
Last night CBS News reported, "When he was running for President, Barack Obama attacked pharmaceutical companies for charging too much for prescription drugs. But now he's teamed up with those same companies to promote his healthcare plan," and critics are accusing President Obama "of making a back-room deal that could end up costing seniors plenty." CBS added, "Initial reports said the White House agreed not to seek price controls on drugs for seniors on Medicare and would not support importing cheaper drugs from
So, no deal?
But on August 5th, the New York Times ran a front page article headlined,
"White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost.”
It read in part,
So, deal?
Simple yes-or-no question: Does the President support "the deal" or does he not?
Read More & Comment...
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